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Piedmont Avenue is a street in North Oakland, California. It is also the name of the neighborhood which surrounds the street.

Piedmont Avenue the street stretches diagonally from Broadway to Pleasant Valley (51st Street), and the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood is generally considered to reach laterally from Broadway to Oakland Avenue and the border to the City of Piedmont, which is a separate, land-locked municipality within Oakland.

A local neighborhood association, the Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League (PANIL), is very active in protecting the neighborhood's charm and livability.

Piedmont Avenue Elementary School, located north of the business district, has grades Kindergarten through 5th. Attendance is roughly 350; average class size about 20. Average test scores are somewhat below average for American schools, but have been approving in recent years. The Catholic Church of Saint Leo the also operates a school on Piedmont Avenue.

There are several landmarks in the area. The center of the Piedmont Avenue commercial strip is a beautiful Julia Morgan-designed 1916 red brick building, the Fred C. Turner Stores, which is between 41st and 40th. Near the north end of Piedmont Avenue and Pleasant Valley is the gorgeous, hillside Mountain View Cemetery, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and contains the Julia Morgan designed Chapel of the Chimes. Kaiser Permanente's flagship hospital is located on the south end of the street.

Piedmont Avenue was once the terminus of the Key System's C line. The station building at 41st Street is still there, but a parking lot now occupies the land where the tracks were. AC Transit's 12, 57, 59, and C lines now serve the neighborhood.

Business district

Piedmont Avenue's namesake commercial strip boasts numerous locally-owned small business, including shops, bars and restaurants, the locally famous Fenton's ice cream parlor, an art house/independent movie theater, and more.

Piedmont Avenue is a haven for caffeine. Gaylord's Cafe Espresso (formerly known as Uncle Gaylord's), Peet's Coffee have both been in the neighborhood since the 1980's. Starbucks arrived more recently, directly across from Gaylord's. L'Amyx Tea Bar serves several varieties of tea and desserts.

The Piedmont Theater a small movie theater that typically shows avante garde movies. The seating configurations can be odd and the screens smallish, but the theater is fairly popular. The theater is owned by Landmark Theaters.

Fenton's Creamery is perhaps the neighborhood fixture. Fenton's serves ice cream and sundaes made on the premises, as well as traditional lunch fare such as sandwiches, burgers and salads. Fenton's has been in the Piedmont Avenue area since 1894, and in its current location since 1961. Favorites include the scrumptuous "Black and Tan", and the enormous "Banana Special". In the 1990's Fenton's management laid off the complete staff and replaced them with non-union workers, resulting in an ugly strike. The nearby Ice Creamery on Lakeshore Avenue absorbed some of the disgruntled patrons. In the early 2000's a fire started by employees during a burglary attempt shuttered Fenton's for over a year. Some have suggested the current owner was involved in the fire for monetary reasons. The gleaming Fenton's that emerged from the ashes included numerous upgrades to a building that had been showing its age. After all this, and rather high prices -- $8 for the Black and Tan, over $10 for the Banana Special -- the customers keep coming.

External links

• Template:Mapit-US-hoodscale
• Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League
• East Bay Neighborhoods: Piedmont Avenue, Oakland - Guide from the San Francisco Chronicle
• Mountain View Cemetery
• Echo Creek

• Oakland, California neighborhoods
• Streets in California